Advanced Differencing of Legacy Code and Migration Logs

Deknop, Céline;Fabry, Johan;Mens, Kim;Zaytsev, Vadim
(2020) Seminar on Advanced Techniques and Tools for Software Evolution (SATTOSE 2020) — Location: Virtual Event (1.July.2020)

Files

sattose2020_paper_6.pdf
  • Open Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 483.55 KB
  • https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Download

Details

Authors
  • Deknop, CélineUCLouvain
    Author
  • Fabry, Johan
    Author
  • Mens, Kimorcid-logoUCLouvain
    Author
  • Zaytsev, Vadim
    Author
Abstract
Most software engineers interact with some form of code differencing every day, either directly or indirectly. Yet, many existing algorithms and tools used in that context have not significantly evolved since the basic Unix diff utility. As a consequence, many specific characteristics and semantics of code are not taken into account in the process, making the task of analysing the output of such tools difficult for developers and causing valuable time to be lost. In this paper, we describe a concrete industrial use case that could benefit from more advanced ways of performing differencing. Additionally, we provide two leads to solutions to solve the problems faced in this context.
Affiliations

Citations